


Precipice

by beccabuchanans (vestigialwords)



Series: Olive Branches Universe [2]
Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, brief non-explicit sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27141469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vestigialwords/pseuds/beccabuchanans
Summary: What the hell am I doing?It isn’t a question he asks himself often. As a military man, an upright officer, and a man of iron-hearted principles, he doesn’t often find himself at a loss like this.(Carrillo!POV Accompaniment to Olive Branches Chapter One)
Relationships: Horacio Carrillo/Reader, Horacio Carrillo/You
Series: Olive Branches Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822000
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Precipice

**Author's Note:**

> This came to be because Julia ([ **@huliabitch**](http://huliabitch.tumblr.com) on tumblr) wanted to know what made Carrillo extend that first peace offering to Reader, i.e., how he came to the decision to risk going over to Reader’s apartment that first night. This was also posted [HERE](https://mandoplease.tumblr.com/post/631540842126082048/precipice) on my tumblr.

_What the hell am I doing?_

It isn’t a question he asks himself often. As a military man, an upright officer, and a man of iron-hearted principles, he doesn’t often find himself at a loss like this. 

Carrillo’s index finger hovers over the tiny button next to your name. He checks, double checks, then _triple_ checks that he’s not accidentally buzzing Peña or Murphy. He could recover if he did, but he would have to think quickly to explain the heavy bottle of thick amber cradled against his forearm. Moreover, he’d have to offer a good reason why ten at night seemed like a reasonable time to make a house call. Hell, he’d probably have to figure that last part out anyway. 

_If you can’t use your damn words…. Figure something else out._

Peña’s voice rings in his mind like church bells resonating against the arching mountain tops that surround the city. It chased him from the training yard, into his office and beyond, echoing off the cold cinder block walls. What he can’t decide is whether they announce a celebration to which he has not yet received an invitation, or foretell a devastating threat, a cold and urgent warning to take shelter, to retreat, or else shoulder the consequences. 

He stands at a precipice, that much is clear. 

The problem is, fanciful words are not his forte. He has always been too abrupt to bother with politics and subterfuge. His power emerges in barked orders, his eloquence in his steadfast commitment to his principles. He finds his surest voice in inconvenient truths ground through gnashing teeth in the faces of those who let pretty words slither out of their mouths as they line their pockets with money soaked red with blood, not in the subtle machinations of the heart. 

Your eyes flash across his memory. Rage, he saw in them–frustration too. You weren’t wrong. He could have signaled, offered a warning, a five-second head start to let you sprint to a better vantage point. At the same time, moments matter in the field. Every plan is subject to the changing conditions on the ground. The mere fraction of a second can mean a life lost or saved when bullets are screaming overhead. No lives had been lost today. He doesn’t regret his decision. 

There had been adrenaline too. Tensions are always high after a raid. Some of his men take out their jitters on the heavy bags dangling from the weight room ceiling. Some of them pump iron until their muscles fail. Some of them go home to their wives and cry. You took to the track that circles his base. He stood at the window overseeing the training yard to watch. By his estimation, you logged at least five miles on the packed dirt path while Peña and Murphy grumbled through two tumblers of whiskey, a stack of paperwork, and more cigarettes than advisable. 

It’s not rage, frustration, or adrenaline that brings him to the front stoop of your building though.

No, he had seen _fear_ flash through you as you rounded on him in the training yard. He watched as shielded terror screamed up from your gut and mingled with the scalding splash of acerbic words across his face. 

He’s not particularly proud of his instincts in the face of your distress, but he finds that he loses control of himself in your presence. Instead of de-escalating, as would be wise, he had snapped into a sloppy mockery of attention and schooled his face into professional neutrality. In this position he can endure anything—uninspired beratement from his drill sergeants in basic training, a severe dressing down from his superiors, or hours spent in formation listening to mind-numbing speeches given by hot winded bureaucrats. His spine aligned ramrod straight, chin jutting proudly upward, and he arranged the unyielding plate armor of his defenses against your assault. 

That’s the problem though, the rigid eventually snap.

You’re a fighter, bullheaded and infuriating, as glib as Peña and as stubborn as himself, and you have an uncanny ability to burrow under his skin more efficiently than even the most vicious of narcotraffickers. It’s not a tendency he has been historically willing to examine, instead retreating further into his foxhole every time he finds himself paired with you on a stakeout, every time you crack an inappropriate joke, toss a wry smile his way. Until now, he’s been successful in his attempts to keep you at arms length. His defenses have held the lines.

Until suddenly they didn’t.

He _cracked_ when you took that last step into his space. You ripped through his carefully constructed barricades and leech a slow spreading warmth into his core. It’s beyond repair this time. No spackle or drywall can hide the damage done to his defenses. He endures a foundational shift, an earthquake shifting the flow of a river. His defenses are demolished, and he’s not sure how to put them back together. 

He’s not sure he wants to. 

He had a close call back there, a bullet screamed past his ear, some shrapnel flew that he ducked just in time. A man–a _child_ –behind him was hit. One second slower and _he_ would have been the one spending the night at the hospital, fresh out of surgery and doped up on morphine. Carrillo considers himself a stoic man, callous to the ever-present specter of death that follows those in his profession. 

Still, he isn’t a machine, no matter what his men say behind his back. It isn’t that he regrets dedicating his youth to his duty while his personal life withered away into nothingness, but every so often he finds himself in need of comfort as well. Most of his men have wives to serve that purpose, and Peña’s methods are out of the question. So he checked for respite where he usually keeps it–in the heavy bottle stashed at the back of his bottom desk drawer. He poured himself a double as he read through the mounting stack of reports in his inbox. 

After one or two ill-composed narratives, the words blurred and twisted in front of his eyes as he lost control of his thoughts, his mind pulled back to that moment in the training yard just hours ago. It skipped in his memory like a broken record, replaying, replaying, and repeating. He found himself struck with regret for not kissing right then as you jammed your finger in his face and snarled up at him for making your job difficult. He wanted to. Almost wished he had. 

You would have pulled your pistol and shot him in the knee, of course. He’d have been hard pressed to disagree with your judgment. 

But in his mind, Peña and all of his men disappeared in the blink of an eye as he crashed his lips to yours, not caring that both of you reeked of sweat and blood and grime. As the ceiling fans whirled overhead, he lifted his glass to take the first sip of his drink. Instead of relief, the tang of the alcohol roared through his nostrils and a different image entirely flared through his brain like fumes—bodies writhing against one another in pleasure, a breathy voice in his ear urging him on instead of snarling in furious frustration. 

He set the heavy glass on his desk with a thud and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms.

He is intimately familiar with fear. He wields it as one of his primary weapons inside the dank interrogation rooms in the bowels of the building. He has seen all breeds of fear twist the features of his countrymen—his enemies and compatriots alike. He knows the mortal terror of a soldier as darkness closes in. He knows the sickening panic that comes over a mother’s face as she realizes how deep her precious boy has sunk in the cartel’s clutches, the anxiety of a mid-level bureaucrat about to be busted for bribery. He knows what it looks like when adrenaline spikes, the animal instinct to fight or flee held at bay only by training. This wasn’t that. 

This was _dread_ , the kind that crumples a new widow’s face when she opens the front door, not to her husband, but to his commanding officer. To a man who stands contrite but unflappable, as if any platitude about heroism and duty could provide even meager comfort in that horrific moment. It’s the precursor to blinding grief, the realization that one is standing on shifting ground, that the limits of life have morphed and twisted whether welcome or not. 

Were you even aware of it, or is he insane? 

He _feels_ insane. 

He stopped on his way home to buy a bottle of whiskey, and the usually tight-lipped old woman behind the counter arched an eyebrow at him. She can see base from her seat at the register, and she always keeps the shop open for him on days when the caravan of trucks screams out and then limps back in a few hours later. Her son had been the Army, she explained once when he asked why she put herself out for him. 

_“Are you alright, son? You seem troubled today, more than usual.”_

“ _A fight—_ ” he shrugged, then reconsidered his choice of words. “ — _A disagreemen_ t.”

_“And who was wrong?”_

_“Nobody.”_

_“Ah.”_

Without further explanation and shooting him a caustic glare of warning when he opened his mouth to protest, she added a second bottle to his selection and rang up only one of them. 

As he returned to his truck, the shop’s cage rolled shut behind him. He had every intention to return home, pour himself a glass of scotch and pass out cold until the next morning. But a red light stopped him on his way, and he spared a glance at the bottles sitting in the backseat. The bottle he chose had fallen over, dropped onto the floor of his truck. The second bottle, the gift, stands tall, rich amber liquid sloshing against thick glass, an off-white label embossed with a golden olive tree that stretches toward the edges of the paper.

_Figure something else out._

Before his rational mind could keep up, the light turned green and he continued straight instead of turning right. He parked instead of turning around. He climbed out of his truck instead of restarting the engine. He walked up the narrow footpath to your front entrance instead of driving away.

So here he is, finger hovering over the button that will shock the intercom in your apartment to violent life. Best case scenario, you’ll invite him up, crack open the bottle and smooth the jagged edges left exposed earlier that evening. More likely, you’ll spit in his face, snatch the whiskey from his hands and slam the door on his nose. But at least then the path forward will be clear. 

_Oh, what the hell._


End file.
